Big Time Unintended Consequence - A Prediction

The Creative Director of the ad agency GG&C (Grabbem, Goadem & Closem) addresses the partners’ committee of the employee rights law firm LL&C (Litigious, Litigiouser & Cohercer) with PowerPoint on one screen and digital video on the other.

“This is it, gentlemen and ladies, the new era!” exaltes the Creative Director.

The PowerPoint screen flashes a print headline in the unmistakable italicized font of The Wall Street Journal: “High Court Limits Time For Filing Bias Lawsuits.”

Then another graphic replaces the headline. It is lifted from the text of the story: “Yesterday’s Supreme Court decision is good news for corporations…..”

The Creative Director chortles. “And hot damn good news for us! Here’s the rough of our first commercial.” He turned to the digital video screen.

Woman in cubicle at computer terminal: She casts a clearly suspicious glare at a man in the cubicle across the aisle working at an identical terminal.

Woman’s Voice Over: “I hear they pay him 8% more than they pay me. I’ve been here a month longer than him, and I can type faster than he can. You can’t tell me that’s not (with reverb) discrimination.”

Overhead, straight-down shot of two executive desks. Behind one a woman, the other a man. The woman’s desk is slightly but perceivable smaller.

Woman’s Voice Over: “We made middle management the same week and his desk is bigger than mine. And his chair looks more comfortable. I think this might be (with reverb) discrimination.”

Fatherly spokesman behind partners’ desk. Big LL&C logo on the wall behind. (Delivery gradually building): “If you see - if you even suspect – that you are the subject of pay discrimination based on your gender, race, religion, sexual preference, age or moral malleability, you must ACT NOW, or forever lose you chance of legal redress!
(Leans back. Continues in a more constrained voice): The distinguished law firm of LL&C reminds you that the United States Supreme Court has now ruled that you must file your pay discrimination complaint within the first 180 days or lose the chance to ever right the wrongs done to you by your scheming, unfeeling, discriminating employer. (Leans forward, warms to the topic again.) That’s one -- hundred -- and --eighty -- days… not 181, not 182. If you have so much as a whit of suspicion that you are the victim of pay discrimination or bias of any kind, Call LL&C now, THIS MINUTE, before your chance for justice disappears like a puff of smoky procrastination. Call 1-800- FILENOW (Repeat number six times)
The United States Supreme Court says this is a right you must (with reverb) USE…. or you LOSE!"

The two screens go dark. The Creative Director looks around the table. Slowly the Partners begin clapping.

After the ovation, one Partner coughs politely and says, “Ah, I believe that ‘puff of smoky procrastination’ might be a bit strong.”

This scene, more or less, is repeated at ad agencies and law firms all over these United States. Spots start running in Grey’s Anatomy, Oprah, ET, cable reruns of Desperate Housewives, You Tube and Google context links. The civil court system starts reeling under the tsunami of new pay discrimination filings.

Abstinence Only = Oral Sex = Throat Cancer

Uh Oh, Another Unintended Consequence

The lead story headline in the May 12 Science News magazine reads like this:

Risk Factor

Throat cancer linked

to virus spread by sex

The virus is the very same HPV (human papillomavirus) that causes cervical cancer and about which there's so much controversy concerning the new HPV vaccine Merck has been pushing for young girls.

The article says throat cancer patients were "more apt to have engaged in oral sex with multiple partners over past years..." And there is more research showing it's because of HPV.

Granted, people of all ages engage in promiscuous oral sex, but the big scary thing is all the new info about how teens who have committed to Abstinence Until Marriage don't consider oral sex to be a violation of their pledge and treat it as just "making out" or "messing around." If those same teens got their sex education in the "abstinence only" mode, they have been spared the truth about how sexually transmitted diseases are transmitted.

Thank heavens the Democratic Congress is about to de-fund much of the abstinence only foolishness. Perhaps this latest medical news will snap some heads up.

Oh, Science News stats: 11,800 The predicted number of new U.S. cases of oropharyngeal cancer in 2007

This I Believe

Things Are Looking Up

When National Public Radio launched its re-make of Edward R. Morrow’s “This I Believe,” I was almost motivated to take a shot at making an entry. I say almost because I just never got around to doing it. I thought about it a bunch. Even my subject and position were clear in my head. Never happened. Darn.

Not to let a well formed idea go totally unpublished, here ‘tis.

It’s simple. Things are getting better. Generally speaking and on a long time scale, that is. Of course some things are getting worse; they always are, but most of the downers are on shorter time scales. And any such judgment on the better/worse balance has to reflect a cosmic perspective, no small task in our quarter-to-quarter, Wall Streetish culture.

I have to admit, attaining cosmicity hasn’t been my strong suit. If you riffle through all the posts on this blog, you can’t help but note that I’ve been much more vocal on worsenings than betterings. Drought, wars, political chicanery, hypocrisy, rotten journalism… you get the drift. But when I lean back on a ponderosa pine in my back yard, clear my mind of the irritants floating through the news-o-sphere and think BIG, my conclusion is that things are, in fact, getting better.

This all started when I was taking umbrage at Fox News. Or maybe it was at the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal (my favorite newspaper – except for the editorial page), or some right wing talk radio show or a dumb letter to the editor in our neighborhood paper The Independent. It just so happens I was reading 1776 by David McCullough, shortly after reading his John Adams, and not that long after reading An Instinct for War by Roger Spiller the noted military historian. The unexpected result of this confluence of the past and the present was Aha!

(Aha!s are natural wonders. Some people get them in the form of religious experiences, others under the influence of psychedelics, so getting one from three history books and the starboard tilt of our contemporary “press” can’t be all that common.)

The point being: No matter how unhappy I might be with the state of journalism, it has been a lot worse than it is now, perhaps never worse than during the birth pangs of the U.S.A. Notables like Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Alexander Hamilton used the press like blunt instruments, buying not only editorials, but whole swaths of reportage to foster their points of view, including slander of their enemies. Not that we don’t have slander these days, but relatively speaking it’s not that pervasive.

And that was the start of it. I started looking at other not-as-bad situations. OK, so millions are starving, victims of genocide, ecological disasters and disease, but it has been worse historically speaking, great plagues, famines and all. OK, there are wars, terrorism, insurgencies and revolutions around the world, but it’s been worse, World Wars and all. So there is illiteracy, ignorance and misinformation all over, but it’s been worse, near universal illiteracy for instance before the printing press.

See? Once you get in the swing of things and don’t limit the historical scale you can tread to find a comparison, the case makes itself. THINGS ARE GETTING BETTER.

Generally speaking. And on a long time scale.

This I believe.

Something Completely Different 2 (Update)

Learning to Love Dandelions (Update)



Speaking of being demonized (as in the Wolfowitz post below), how about the poor dandelion?

Noxious weed. Besmircher of perfectly manicured lawns. Victim of hyper-gonadal gunslinger types advertising weed killers (akin to Agent Orange) on TV.

I have to admit, I have shared the reflex to slaughter dandelions on sight - after all I lived in Dallas for 20 years. When you become addicted to Saint Augustine turf...

But now I live in the country, yea the woods and meadows of Albuquerque's East Mountains, eastern slope. Wild flowers abound. And, truth be told, dandelions are wildflowers. Real beauties at that. They decorate the meadows with brilliant yellow sunburst flowers and serrated leaves that look like mediæval lance blades. Or lions' teeth in some opinions; can't see that myself.

Soon the flowers morph magically - overnight, I think - into amazing puff balls of seeds on parachutes. The first illustrated story book I fell in love with (at 2 ½ years old) had a beautiful fairy tossing golden coins one night to make the flowers and sweeping her wand the next night to make the puffballs.)

Take a look at a dandelion puffball with a good magnifying glass and see how nature puts Buckminster Fuller's geodesic dome to shame. Then blow all the seeds aloft with the same gusto you might blow out your birthday candles on that 30th birthday cake. The storm of floaters looks like paratroopers coming down behind the lines at Normandy. Two wonders for the price of one. Ah, this is an enriching weed indeed.

Now that I have overcome dandelionophobia, I not only marvel at the flying seeds, I wish them fertile landing spots and favorable moisture conditions. Thanks I think to my huffing and puffing last year (and an atypically moist winter and spring this year) we have a bumper crop of the yellow flowers and wanded puffballs around our place. I swear I can see the impact of my blowing job.

Another benefit of learning to love dandelions is being able to read about them with pure admiration and none of the fear and loathing I used to feel. Think about reading this if you hate dandelions:

From its thick tap root, dark brown, almost black on the outside though white and milky within, the long jagged leaves rise directly, radiating from it to form a rosette Iying close upon the ground, each leaf being grooved and constructed so that all the rain falling on it is conducted straight to the centre of the rosette and thus to the root which is, therefore, always kept well watered. [that from Botanical.com]

Sounds like a wonder of nature if you like dandelions, or a formidable opponent if you hate them.

Maybe I'm just an accomodationist facing the if-you-can't-beat-'em.... reality, but I honestly think I've converted. I'm not a fanatic about it; when a dandelion challenges our cucumbers - zip, out it goes. But I dig out its thick, dark brown, almost black tap root by hand, never with Agent Orange. Just out of respect.

Update 5.30.07: Dandelion pollen is a major nutritive for juvenille honeybees. (Source Suzan Smith, educator, neighbor). Considering the growing honeybee crisis, I'd say this is important news.

Wolfowitz the Witless

Wolfo-Whatz?

What a record

What a legacy

A career based

On sheer fallacy

Chief architect

Of the war in Iraq

Deep in the red

Never the black

Got the foundation wrong

So the structure is gone.

Number One among NeoCons

Famous for saying

(The rest of us praying)

They’ll welcome us as liberating

Anyone at all

With any sense

Saw from the start

The incompetence

Cheney’s creature

It is said

Grinning Familiar

To the Deathhead

Embarrassed us all

At the old World Bank

Another Bush Baby

Down the tank

Helped write the words

Of W’s song

“I may be mistaken

But I’m never wrong”

He pushed to the metal

The dead wrong pedal

Guess he will get

The Freedom Medal